


Come to Me, all You who Labour and are Heavy Laden

by StopTalkingAtMe



Category: Stanton & Barling - E.M. Powell
Genre: Angst, Canon-Style Plot - Freeform, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical mortal peril, Getting Together, Implied/Referenced strangulation, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Major spoilers for The Monastery Murders, Murder, Mystery/Procedural, Smut, Treat, brief mentions of self-harm, suffocation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 00:50:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19240501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/pseuds/StopTalkingAtMe
Summary: Several months after the events at Fairmore Abbey and still exhausted and haunted by his ordeal, Barling is called north in Stanton's company once more to investigate the murder of a young woman who seems to have died at the hands of a man who Barling sent away to the gallows the previous summer.





	Come to Me, all You who Labour and are Heavy Laden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greygerbil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/gifts).



> I knew I wanted to write something for this the moment I saw it in the tag set, although I wasn't sure if I'd actually be able to get it finished until the reveals delay was announced. I'm afraid the plotline owes more of a debt to Agatha Christie than I originally hoped it would, although god knows I'm no Agatha Christie. It was still a hell of a lot of fun to write.
> 
> The title is taken from a bible quote: Matthew 11:28-30. It seemed appropriate.

**Come to Me, all You who Labour and are Heavy Laden**

 

i

 

The wind snatched at Barling’s robes, pinched at his cheeks chapped red raw and stinging from the long ride north so soon after their visit to Fairmore Abbey. It might have been spring, but there was still a wintry bite to the air.

Beneath the outcrop of stone, the grass seemed crumpled, as if something had made its bed there. Catherine Blake's body had long since been removed, although with Barling’s mood so troubled, he had the uneasy feeling that if a shaft of light fell in a certain way the corpse might reappear, as though her ghost still lingered in this desolate place, forever crammed beneath the rock like a child's discarded ragdoll.

And perhaps that might even be true: the light was strange in this God-forsaken place. Something about the way the clouds crawled atop the moors like monstrous sky-bound beasts, casting great swathes of the countryside into shadow. This land reminded him of an old nag beaten not quite past the point of submission, biding its time for the moment it reared around and bit its master.

"It’s your fault, this," the shepherd said, each word distorted by his tear-swollen throat and his all-consuming grief. Stanton, hovering around Alice Langdon, ever ready and all-too-willing to offer comfort and succour to a young woman in need, looked up.

The shepherd’s gaze had been fixed on the rocks, so it took Barling a moment or two to realise the shepherd had been talking to him, rather than to God or to whatever heathenish spirits dwelled on the moors. In his alarm, he straightened up too quickly, and was struck by a wave of dizziness.

The shepherd, Matthew, took a step towards him, hands clenching into fists. "It were you brought this on us."

Stanton’s eyes widened and he started towards them, but it was Alice Langdon who intervened. Alice Langdon, with her wind-chapped face and lips and her clothes so shabby she might have been a servant, who stepped between them, talking to the shepherd in a voice so soft Barling couldn’t have made out her words even if she hadn’t been talking in the strange mangled dialect of the north. She soothed the shepherd as if he were a frightened child, rather than a man bent on violence.

Stanton cast Barling a strange look. Guilty no doubt for having been so engrossed in the presence of a young woman that he’d failed to notice the danger to his master, but he also looked puzzled, as if he’d seen something in Barling’s expression. Stanton with his gift for spotting the inconvenient detail. Even if he did often lack the wisdom that came with age and experience, or the ability to determine how the pieces of a puzzle fit together.

_It were you brought this on us._

An inconvenient detail, indeed. Because in the moment that the shepherd had been coming at him with those great calloused fists opening and closing, Barling had been struck with a single notion so powerful he’d almost forgot to feel afraid.

Matthew was _right._

ii

"It’s an evil matter," Stanton said, leaning against the desk, his voice lowered. "That poor girl."

Barling said nothing, attention fixed on the wax tablet where he’d laid out the facts of the case as was his habit. At least, he had attempted to, but his thoughts and memories were churning and he found he was at a loss as to where he ought to begin. With the murder of Catherine Blake? Or earlier, with poor dead Mary, whose death he had thought solved almost a year ago?

Each time he determined a suitable point at which to begin, doubt began to gnaw at his gut, and with it, fear, because if Mary's death were the true beginning of this matter, then he had erred very badly indeed.

"I’ve been talking to the dairy maids," Stanton said. Barling rolled his eyes upwards, allowing only exasperation to show on his face rather than his keenly felt relief. At least Stanton’s chatter offered a respite from his own worries.

"Indeed?"

Stanton offered him a grin, eyes glinting. There wasn’t much humour to it, and Barling recalled the questioning look Stanton had given him earlier. Hard not to see it as accusatory now, although he couldn’t be certain he wasn’t seeing things.

God’s teeth, he missed London. He missed his books and the soft dusty peace of the scriptorium, the echoing of footsteps on stone, the grey choppy waters of the Thames. The noise and the bustle of the finest city in all the world. Certainly the finest city Barling had ever been to.

Less than a month he’d had at home, and most of that beneath ceaseless rain, before de Glanville had summoned him once more and he was sent away.

Lord de Montfort’s letter had been filled with irony, ripe with a bitter mocking tone. His demesne had been stricken by a curse, it said, which was quite clearly nonsense, but the death of another woman so soon after the man responsible for the previous death had been hanged had to be investigated. And who better than Barling, since he’d had so much success in the past?

It felt like a trap springing shut.

And then he’d arrived and found Lord de Montfort a broken man, too unwell to see them, or so his son, John de Montfort, had claimed.

"The house is haunted," Stanton told him. "And it’s not just the house. One of them, Hannah," – there was a slight emphasis to the way Stanton said _that_ particular name – "she told me a story about a big black dog that haunts this part of the land. A great monstrous thing, she said, bigger than a mastiff. Bigger than a pony. Anyone that sees it is cursed. She says..." He hesitated, gaze flicking away. Barling glanced at him sharply.

"What is it?"

"She says Mary saw it before she died."

"You were right, Stanton," Barling said, and each word carried with it a weight of judgement. "Nothing useful at all." And he turned his head, feeling Stanton’s gaze on his shoulders, a crawling sensation at the back of his neck. He plucked up the stylus and studied the wax tablet, thinking of Mary, of Catherine, of a vast black dog, of a young man dancing at the end of a rope, the ground beneath him soaked dark with piss while a crowd jeered.

"It wasn’t your fault," Stanton said softly.

Barling had heard that before.

There’d been an inn on the journey down to London from Fairmore Abbey. A filthy place, where they’d been forced to share a bed in a room filled with strangers. His body had already been a mass of aches from the journey, and he’d woken that night feeling cold as the grave, in a room that reeked of other men’s excretions, of sweat and piss and flatulence. A gruff stranger’s voice had hissed at him from the darkness to shut the fuck up, and he bit down hard on the meat of his palm until the splintered walls of the coffin receded, and all he could see was the glimmer of moonlight through the cracks in the shutters, and all he could feel was the warmth of Stanton’s body in the bed beside him. He’d tried to keep some space between them, but his back hardly made for a solid fortification, and Stanton sprawled across the bed in his sleep, so oblivious that not even a sharp elbow to the ribs could induce him to respect the proper boundaries Barling set down.

He’d murmured the same thing then, still half-asleep, and with a tender softness to his voice that made him sound like a lover, and Barling had felt another dagger’s twist of shame.

"I spoke to Matthew too," Stanton said. "The shepherd. He begged me to send his apologies for what he said. He was upset. He didn’t know what he was saying."

"Thank you, Stanton."

"What really happened, Barling?" Stanton asked. "The other girl, back in the summer."

Barling gave Stanton a look, but the truth was that this might give him the opportunity to arrange his thoughts. "A young woman was murdered. Mary Hirst. Much like Catherine, she was strangled, although her body was left in the stables rather than on the moors. At first suspicion fell on an outsider. There was talk of a vagrant – a ragged-looking fellow with a pock-marked face – whom Mary had been frightened of, but I proved this to be false, a rumour spread by one of the dairymaids." He paused, gave Stanton a look. "She believed the lie. She was a simple creature, and half in love with Thomas Parrington, the man on trial and Lord William de Montfort's bastard son. When he learned she’d admitted the tale of the vagrant was a lie, he confessed."

"He admitted it?"

Barling nodded, thinking of the way Thomas Parrington had flexed his hands, stared down at them as if they were entirely unfamiliar, those of a stranger. And then he’d looked up, and all his fear had gone, replaced with determination.

 _It was me_ , he’d said. _It was me. I killed the bitch. So fucking hang me, you arseholes. I killed her. Hang_ me _._

 _I killed her. Hang_ me _._

He was back there in that reeking cell, back in the moment Thomas changed from denial to sudden fervent admission, wheeling like a flock of starlings banking to avoid a hawk. Barling had been certain Thomas Parrington was the killer, but he’d still felt a moment of bitter doubt.

"And the dairymaid who lied for him?" Stanton asked.

"Dead, I believe. She died of an illness over the winter."

"Yet more evidence of a curse," Stanton commented, and Barling wished he hadn’t. He pursed his lips, but he couldn’t bring himself to admonish Stanton. Not about this. Stanton was frowning thoughtfully. "Do you believe an innocent man was sent to the gallows?"

"No." Barling shook his head, ignoring the doubt gnawing at his gut. " _No_. I am certain justice was served. I believed then, as I do now, that Thomas Parrington murdered Mary Hirst. I am quite certain of it."

But he’d been wrong before, hadn’t he? In Fairmore, he should have seen the truth; if he had, how many lives would he have saved? Sinful lives, true, but it was an exceptionally rare soul that didn’t have a stain or two upon it. Not even a newborn baby, still slick with gore from its mother’s womb, could be free of sin.

But, still, if he’d managed to save _some_ of them – the girl Agatha, for instance – perhaps he wouldn’t be waking at night with the walls of a coffin closing in on him.

Stanton was looking at him, a frown knitting his brows. He said nothing, but Barling fancied he knew the question running through the young man’s mind anyway.

_What if you are wrong?_

There came a knock on the door, and Barling nodded to Stanton who rose to answer it. It was John de Montfort, the image of a lord’s son. "Forgive me for disturbing you, Master Barling. It seems my father has recovered some of his strength. and is asking to speak with you."

iii

 

‘Recovered some of his strength’, John de Montfort had said, but if that were really true of the shrunken figure in the bed then Barling dreaded to see what he had been like before. He remembered Sir William as a hale and hearty man, and it was a shock to see him so reduced, his skin papery and dry.

Alice Langdon sat demurely by his bed, spooning an appetising-smelling meat broth into his mouth. She was dressed more neatly than before, her hair brushed and her clothes less shabby, but she still looked like a servant. She glanced up, her eyes flitting first to Barling, and then – _of course_ – to Stanton, where they lingered for a moment, then to John de Montfort, and finally back down to the bowl. She dipped the spoon into the broth and brought it to de Montfort’s lips, where it dribbled down his chin. Alice made a clucking sound and scooped it up with the spoon, while the old man jerked his slumped-in face to the side.

John de Montfort took hold of Barling’s arm. "I beg you, sir," he said, his voice low, "to remember my father is unwell. He makes little sense at times."

Alice glanced up. There was a look of sorrow on her pretty freckled face, a downturn to her mouth that echoed de Montfort’s asymmetrical features.

"Thank you," Barling said, disentangling himself. "I will keep it in mind."

John looked as if he wanted to argue further, but he merely nodded and stepped back. Barling opened his mouth, but before he could speak Lord de Montfort stirred, his face contorting into an inhuman mask of rage.

" _You._ " His voice was so mangled and slurred it was hard to make out his words. "You hanged my boy. My beloved boy–" One arm was useless, twisted up against his torso like the withered limb of a cripple, but the other scrabbled at the sheets, trying to push himself up into a sitting position. "On the word of a whore."

Alice attempted to intervene, murmuring, "My Lord, please–" but he shrugged her off.

"Thomas Parrington confessed to Mary’s murder," Barling said, but his words seemed to lack conviction. The others might not have noticed, but Stanton did, casting him a sharp little look.

"Then perhaps it is his ghost!" de Montfort roared, pounding his one good hand against the blanket. God’s teeth, the storm of this man’s rage. Were he in good health, it would have been terrifying. "His ghost or the devil himself who torments us!" He stabbed his finger at Barling, the thickened nail yellowing. "Or perhaps it is _you_ , clerk. You who brought this black cloud upon my house. Mark me, that girl’s blood is on your hands, as surely as if you had put your hands about her throat and throttled her yourself–" His voice broke. Like a summer storm, he’d exhausted himself. He slumped back against the bed, gasping for breath.

"Enough," John said, looking grim. "Calm yourself, Father. It is as Barling says. Thomas confessed before God. He had no reason to lie."

There was no telling whether de Montfort had heard his son’s words. The old man had sagged back against the bed, his eyes closed. Alice was sponging his forehead, her eyes shining with tears. John gestured towards the door.

"Well, Master Barling?" he said, once they were in the corridor. He’d layered a brittle veneer of black humour over a voice that otherwise shook. "Do you feel you have learned anything of use?"

"Only that my Lord de Montfort is very unwell."

"Indeed he is, I am very sad to say. And not himself." John grimaced. "I’m sorry for my father’s words. He did not mean them."

There didn’t seem any reason to believe he was not sincere. Still, it struck Barling that there seemed a great many words spoken in this household that were not meant. "You believe then, that–" He hesitated. John was studying him with a steady gaze.

"That my beloved half-brother was a murderer? Why else would he confess?"

"Why indeed," Barling murmured, and John’s brows contracted.

"What was your brother like?" Stanton asked.

"Thomas? He was…" William cocked his head, considering, and when he spoke again, it was clear that he was choosing his words carefully. Barling could not tell if the aim was to conceal the truth or ensure accuracy. "He was like quicksilver. He could be feckless. And passionate. And wild. My father doted on Thomas, or so he would claim. No doubt he said much the same to you last summer…?"

Barling inclined his head.

"I loved him too," John continued. "For the longest time. But don’t be fooled, sir – my father might have loved Thomas, but they’d rage at each other like dogs."

"They fought? About what?"

"The list is endless. Thomas drank, he gambled, and he was bad at both. My father has little patience for men who have no skill at either. And they argued about Alice, of course."

Barling looked up sharply. "Alice Langdon? For what reason?"

"For a while, my father intended that they should be married. She’s a clever girl, Alice, and she knows this land well. She’ll make someone a good wife, and as far as my father was concerned, that person might as well be Thomas. Unfortunately Thomas disagreed."

"He didn’t care for her," Stanton asked.

"He hated her. My father was furious. They raged about it for weeks. There were times when I feared they might..." John hesitated. "Well, it never came to that, thank God. But their fights would put Thomas in such a rage as you have never seen. And by God, Thomas could rage. I told you I used to love him?"

"That did not remain the case?"

"It all started to change when I was nine years of age. They’d been fighting, Thomas and my father. I was playing in the garden, dropping stones in the well. Thomas came storming out with a face like granite. I called a greeting to him and he stopped. Just stopped and looked at me, and his face went dark–" John stopped, a quaver in his voice. His lips twitched. "I truly thought him the devil in that moment."

"What happened?" Stanton asked.

John de Montfort smiled. It was unconvincing. "We fought," he said. "As boys do. What else?"

iv

_John de Montfort believes his half-brother was a murderer._

Barling’s hand had already been shaking when he began to set the details down, but now the tremor grew so hard he was forced to put down the stylus. Details flickered through his mind: de Montfort stabbing his finger in accusation, John’s flat lying smile.

_Or, more accurately, that his half-brother could have been a murderer._

_Hang_ me.

By all accounts. Thomas had always been quick to anger. He took after his father; he was prone to the same sudden furies that de Montfort had just demonstrated. That made him a likely murderer, but equally it also made him a believable target on which to pin the blame.

_But he confessed. He confessed._

His thoughts were chasing each other around in circles. The candlelight was scarcely enough to illuminate the room, the walls of plaster pressing in too close, and surely it was only a trick of the light that seemed to turn that plaster into slatted planks of wood. He shuddered, forcing his attention back to his notes.

It was safer to let his thoughts chase themselves in circles than to risk closing his eyes. All too often when he did, he’d find himself in Paris, lowering his trembling body into Richard’s bed, or else at the abbey, trapped in a narrow coffin, panic and confinement and the embrace of the dead man beneath him squeezing the breath out of him. In the worst of the dreams, Richard had by some strange twist of fate been interred in the abbey’s crypt, and Barling was entombed with his lover’s corpse. And then there were the dreams where the dead were waiting for him, eyes burning in silent accusation.

He exhaled sharply and stood up so fast his chair clattered noisily back. He flinched. His sudden movement had set the candleflame to guttering, and dark shadows clawed their way across the wall.

It was no use. His thoughts were fogged with exhaustion. The order he’d tried to weave from chaos seemed only to have resulted in more tangles, and he had accomplished nothing. He needed to sleep.

He retired to bed, but his sleep was restless and disturbed, fraught by a dream in which he was awake when Abbot Philip tried to entomb him. The coffin seemed bottomless, the opening to a stinking well that stretched down, deep into the bowels of the earth, and as he struggled with the madman something rotted and monstrous came clawing up towards him out of Hell itself.

He woke with a cry, saw in the liminal border between sleep and waking the abbot himself looming over him, and he cried out again. The abbot stepped back into the shadows, melting away into the play of light and shadow, a slow dissolving. _Nothing there_.

A sudden knock at the door made him jump again. "Barling?" It was Stanton, his voice, urgent. "Are you all right?"

Quickly, he rose out of bed and opened the door. Stanton shoved past him, looking around the room. "I heard you cry out. I thought–"

"It was nothing." He closed the door.

"More dreams?"

" _No_." Too forceful. "No, Stanton, no, it was not."

"Just the ghost then?" Stanton said, gentler.

"There is no ghost," Barling said, his voice clipped and stern.

"I almost wish there was," Stanton said gloomily. "I’d rather a ghost than a madman."

"Another woman is dead. No ghost did that."

"No, no, of course not." Stanton’s bright eyes softened with concern, and he came closer, resting his hand on Barling’s shoulder. "You look exhausted, Barling. You should sleep."

"I have tried."

In truth, the weight of exhaustion was crushing him. He could count the number of unbroken nights of sleep he’d had since the abbey on one hand, and there was nothing he wanted more than to collapse into bed and sleep, but it seemed the events in this house had stirred up all his old memories, the layers of hidden secrets buried in the silt.

Perhaps Stanton’s touch on his shoulder was meant to be comforting, but it felt like a heavy weight, and Barling had to fight the urge to shake him off. He could smell the wine on Stanton’s breath, could see the berry-red stain of it on his top lip. There was a golden shadow of stubble on his jaw, like the bristle of harvested wheat before the gleaners picked their way through.

He ought by rights to order Stanton to return to his chamber, but he could not bring himself to say the words, caught in the grip of foolish superstition, unable to shake the feeling that something was lurking in the gloom, waiting for the moment he was alone.

"I dreamed about the abbey," he said. Stanton went still, putting on the same blank expression he’d worn at Fairmore when Barling had made his confession. Odd, Barling thought, that confessing his sins to Stanton had seemed to lighten his burden more than confessing to a priest, but perhaps that was because Stanton had hidden his disgust and revulsion better than Barling’s confessor had. "The–" The words choked him. "–The _coffin._ I could not breathe."

"Well, you’re safe now," Stanton said, then glanced around with a wry twist of his mouth. "Probably. I wish we were in London."

"As do I." Ensconced in a world of muted whispers and the stolid dependability of parchment. Not that he was free from the grip of nightmares there either, but at least he was safe. He sighed. "Return to your room. We’ll speak in the morning."

Stanton started towards the door, then hesitated. "I… could stay."

A strange sensation rolled in Barling’s stomach. It was followed almost instantly by a surge of fear. "No," he managed.

"I would prefer to," Stanton said, lowering his voice. "I do not like this house, and I do not think we are safe. There’s something wrong here."

"Certainly there will be if… if..." _If you share my bed,_ he wanted to say, but he couldn’t get the words out. Besides, that certainly could not be Stanton’s meaning. His cheeks were burning,

Stanton frowned. "If what?"

"Stanton..."

Something flickered in Stanton’s eyes as he searched Barling’s face. Damn him, with his eye for the inconvenient detail. Slowly, lazily, as though the entire business amused him, he said, "Are you afraid I might take advantage of you?"

Stanton, with his golden hair and easy smile, and practised seat in a saddle. Stanton’s warm close body, rich with the smell of horse and sweat and wine, sprawled across the bed like a lover. It had been the first time Barling had shared a bed with a man – with _anyone_ – since Paris, and it had been a mistake. The price he paid had been dreams of a very different kind, very nearly as discomfiting as his nightmares. Worse, in fact, since they were sinful in their own right, and entirely out of his control.

He drew back, pulling himself up to his full meagre height. "You are mocking me."

"Of course I’m not. Forgive me. I… I’m _worried_ about you, Barling. Ever since the abbey, you haven’t been yourself. You barely seem to sleep, and when you do..."

Barling stiffened, mouth pressing together in a hard line of warning.

Stanton hesitated, then pressed on, gentler. "...And when you do, you wake up screaming and..."

"And what?"

Stanton drew a reluctant breath. "And begging for forgiveness,"

Barling’s expression froze on his face. The muscles in his cheeks felt stiff and painful. The pert face of girl at the abbey, the monks’ whore, flickered through his mind. So young, and slaughtered on a man’s mad whim. Because of _him_. "You have been spying on me?"

"Inns often have thin walls. I couldn’t help overhearing." And Stanton was drawing closer. Too close. A shiver of excitement crept down Barling’s spine. "And not that I think you’re any more likely to listen this time, Barling, but it was not your fault."

He wanted to wrench away. He wanted to press himself closer. "Are you a priest," he said roughly, "able to give absolution?"

"You mean like Abbot Philip?"

Barling shuddered.

"No," Stanton continued, "I’m no priest. But I know enough to know that you cannot keep blaming yourself for… for the crimes of another man. Are you really so are determined to punish yourself?"

"The abbot was–"

"What makes you think I’m talking about the _abbot_?"

Barling closed his mouth and bit very hard down on the tip of his tongue so that he tasted blood. "You are drunk, Stanton."

"Unfortunately, not nearly drunk enough. God’s eyes, we’re friends, Barling, aren’t we? Can a man not worry about his friend? Or am I nothing more than your assistant? Between Claresham and Fairmore, I’ve spent more time in your company this past year than in anyone else’s."

Barling looked away. "You do not understand what you are asking, Stanton. Why do you think I no longer drink? Why do you think I no longer _sing_?"

"Because you want to be miserable?"

Barling frowned. "You _are_ drunk."

"I wish I was. It might make this mess easier. And I do understand what I am asking, Barling. Better than you, I suspect." He gripped Barling’s hand, and Barling took an involuntary step back, wanting to wrench his hand away, yet somehow not quite able to make himself do so. In comparison to his own soft coddled hands, Stanton’s hand was warm and calloused. "Do you think I haven’t seen the way you look at me?"

Twin fists closed around his heart and his throat. Richard, spitting insults at him. The violent sensation of his heart being systematically ground into dust. He felt faint. He’d known how sickened Stanton must have been by his confession, although he’d hidden it well on that day when Barling had taken his worst secret and laid it in Stanton’s hands, knowing full well that it gave Stanton the power to destroy him. Expecting him to do exactly that. And then he hadn’t. He’d kept Barling’s secret safe. Or so Barling had thought.

Instead it seemed Stanton had hidden his disgust deliberately, not out of discretion and respect for Barling’s feelings, but in order to… to what? To trick him, months down the line, when Barling was exhausted and vulnerable? Out of mockery? He would never have thought Stanton capable of such cruelty, but if that was the case, then clearly he did not truly know Stanton at all. That wounded him almost more than the mockery.

 _Perhaps it is not mockery at all,_ a quiet internal voice murmured. As if that wouldn’t have make matters a thousand times worse if it were true.

"No," he snapped, summoning up as much anger as he could and taking refuge in it. "And you forget your place, Stanton. There is only so much I can tolerate. Return to your room. We are perfectly _safe_ –"

A scream rang out. Barling’s mouth dropped open and Stanton glanced wearily at him.

"You were saying?" he said. Then he started towards the door, and moved out into the hall. Barling followed, heard a panicked thumping further down the corridor. They burst around the corner and saw Alice collapsing on the floor, clutching at her throat and gasping for air.

"Someone has tried to strangle her," Barling said, dropping to his knees beside her. She clung to him gratefully, pressing her hand to her throat.

"He fled when he heard you coming," she said through snatched breaths, her voice hoarse. Barling nodded to Stanton, who hurried along the corridor in search of her attacker.

"Did you see his face?" Barling asked, and she shook her head, set her hand against the wall and pushed herself to her feet. There was a scarlet weal about her throat.

"I saw nothing."

Stanton returned, grim-faced. "Gone. The shutters in the kitchen are open, and there are footprints on the flagstones before the window. It looks like whoever it was got in that way. And out again."

"Or wanted it to seem so," Barling said.

Alice looked up at him, her eyes wide and frightened. "You believe it might have been someone from the household?" She shook her head. "No, no, sir, you must be wrong."

"We can be certain of nothing as yet," Barling said. "Except for one thing."

"Which is?" Stanton asked.

"This was evidently not the work of a ghost."

A door slammed and John de Montfort came down the corridor, looking furious. "What in God’s name is going on? Alice?" He stared at the three of them, caught between confusion and anger. If this callow young man had attacked Alice, he was a finer actor than Barling could ever have believed.

She lifted her head. "Somebody tried to kill me, John." He stared at them, momentarily at a loss for words.

"Is this some sort of joke?" he demanded finally.

"No joke, I can assure you," Barling said. Alice tilted her head back, showing John the mark on her neck.

"He seems to have escaped through a window," Stanton said. "He can’t have got far."

John nodded grimly. "And he won’t be getting any further, I assure you. I’ll rouse some men and we will hunt this bastard down. I’ve had enough of ghosts and curses. I mean to put an end to this business once and for all."

Stanton nodded. John strode away and Alice followed. Stanton seemed torn, glancing at Barling with what seemed like genuine concern. "Are you sure you’ll be all right?"

"I will be fine."

"Well, be careful. We don’t know for certain that whoever it was won’t double back to the house. Perhaps I should..."

"Go," Barling insisted. "It is your duty, Stanton. We are the King’s Men."

The young man sighed, pushing a hand into his hair. "My duty is to you," he said quietly, his voice a little strange. He started away, then hesitated, looking back. "May I ask a question, Barling?"

"Is it important?"

"Probably not. Who was it? The person whose forgiveness you were begging?"

Barling’s mouth went dry. He closed his eyes. "All of them," he whispered, then he stiffened as Stanton leaned in and pressed his lips against Barling’s mouth in a closed-mouthed kiss. Then he was pulling away. By the time Barling managed to open his eyes, Stanton had gone.

v

Once Barling had dressed, he found Alice in the kitchen, keeping herself busy by peeling soaked reeds for rushlights. Her eyes were red and swollen. She started as he entered, and lifted her gaze to his, her cheeks flushing. She gestured to her work. "I know I should return to bed," she said defensively, "but I do not think I can."

He nodded, understanding. "You were very lucky. Had Stanton and I been slower, you might have come to serious harm. Are you in pain?"

"My throat hurts a little, but I’m sure I’ll survive. You’re right though, sir, I might have thanked God already, but I haven’t yet thanked you."

He shook his head, indicating it was nothing, and turned towards the window. He was relieved to see it had been tightly shuttered once more. "May I ask why you were up and about at this time of night?" he asked as he knelt down to investigate the wet footprints before the window.

"I thought I heard a noise," she said.

"And you did not think it the ghost?"

"Or Hannah’s Black Dog? No, I did not. I worried it might have been my Lord de Montfort."

Barling looked up sharply. "I thought Sir William could not walk."

"Then you were mistaken, sir. He can walk with some difficulty. He ought to use a cane, but he’s a proud man. He’s prone to falling. I feared he might do himself an injury." She shrugged, touched her throat. "Instead… as you can see..."

"May I ask what your place in this household is?"

"Something less than family, and something more than a servant. My mother worked for my Lord de Montfort’s uncle, whose house this once was. He was very fond of her, and when she took ill and died he took care of me. In many ways he treated me like a daughter."

"He had no children of his own?"

She shook her head. "And when he died, naturally the title and desmesne passed to my Lord de Montfort. He has been very kind."

"And Thomas Parrington. Was he kind?"

At that she went still, the rhythmic repetitive movements of the stripping of the soaked rushes stopping. "I barely had the chance to get to know him. Scarcely six months passed between his arrival here and..." She trailed off, paling.

"His hanging?" Barling prompted. She nodded, not looking at him. "Do you believe he deserved to hang?"

She lifted her head and stared at him with tear-reddened but defiant eyes. "I hope he’s rotting in hell."

"He was cruel to you?"

She held his gaze a moment, then dropped it. "To everyone, sir. Not only to me."

"I had heard he was kind to Mary Hirst."

"Because he intended to seduce her, perhaps." She gave him a weary smile when he raised an eyebrow at her forthright tone, and held up her hands. "I have delivered lambs with these hands, sir, pulled them slick with blood from the ewes that bore them. I have a fair idea of what happens between men and women, even if he’d never have looked at me twice."

"Why did he dislike you so much?"

"Perhaps I was too bold for him." She sighed. "But I suspect it was because I reminded him too much of his own dependent position, and he did not like that at all."

"John de Montfort suggested you might have been married."

She nodded. "Nothing was ever said to me, but I think the possibility was considered. Thomas had his sights set on something much higher than me, though."

"Such as?" Barling prompted.

"I did not know his mind then, sir, and I certainly do not know it any better now that he is dead. Besides which, I’m not sure that’s a question even he could have answered." She stood. "Forgive me, sir. I find I am tired after all. I will retire, if you don’t mind." And then she glanced up at the ceiling and sighed. "I suppose I had better check on Sir William first though."

"I will come with you," Barling said at once, although should anyone be lurking with the intention of doing her further harm, it was unlikely they’d be scared off by a slightly built clerk, even one who represented the court of the king in the matter of law. Clearly Alice must have been thinking the same as she smiled.

"There’s really no need. I’m certain I will be fine."

"Nevertheless. I should like to speak to Sir William again. I have some further questions for him if he is able to answer them."

She cast him a coolly amused look. "I don’t recall you asking any questions at all when you saw him last," she said.

He followed her through the house, sticking tight to the circle of light cast by the candle. It seemed that something malevolent might be lurking in every shadowy recess and doorway. He wished Stanton were here, and not only because he was afraid for himself. There was a murderer abroad, and fast rider or not, Stanton was only a little better than Barling in a fight.

His mind turned to the kiss, and to the argument they’d had in his chamber.

_Are you really so are determined to punish yourself?_

Was that what he was doing? He thought of an anchorite he’d known as a boy, skeletally-thin, with flesh that bore the marks of his holiness. For a while Barling had marvelled at him, enthralled at how close such a creature must be to God to bear the marks of Christ on the cross and yet live, until he learned that the anchorite was in the habit of deliberately worrying at the wounds in his hands with a rusting nail, working it deeper in search of the glory of God.

Barling shivered in a sudden draught, and for a moment he couldn’t remember the last time he was truly warm. No fire seemed capable of warming him these days. And then it came to him: that filthy inn on the journey from Fairmore Abbey, and Stanton in his bed, the first time in fifteen years he had shared his bed with anyone. It seeped through him, the temptation, dizzying his senses like the richest sweetest wine. It seemed that he could still feel Stanton’s lips on his, only it was no longer a chaste kiss, but open-mouthed and hungry.

Alice cast him a querying look, and he realised his fingertips were pressed against his mouth. He dropped his hand, embarrassed and angry. Before her considering gaze, it felt as if he had been stripped bare, all his secrets revealed to her knowing gaze.

 _Do you think I haven’t seen the way you look at me?_ Stanton had said.

God’s teeth, had he really been that obvious? A storm of shame assaulted him. Stanton, twelve years his junior, and as much a slave to idleness and the pursuit of pleasure as Barling had once been, before he realised his love for Richard was rotten at its core. He’d thought himself free, when in truth he was a foolish rudderless boy with no direction, no faith in himself, in his studies, or in the law. Just like Stanton, he’d been a boy ripe for seduction, and while he might not be a boy any more, that did not mean he was any less free from temptation.

And yet a quiet voice whispered, _Hugo Stanton is not Richard. And nor are you._

"Is something wrong?" Alice asked, and he came up short, flustered. They were outside the door to Sir William’s chamber.

"I’m afraid my mind is on other matters."

"Thinking on the questions you intend to ask?"

"That’s right," he said, relieved to have an answer that sounded somewhat credible. And ashamed that he hadn’t yet thought of a single question. Too busy wallowing.

"I wouldn’t get your hopes up," she said. "I doubt you’ll get any answers. Not useful ones, anyway." She knocked on the door, opened it gently. "My lord?" she called softly.

Barling waited, fidgeting. If Sir William was asleep, there seemed little point in waiting, but the thought of returning to his room and the cold empty bed seemed unbearable. There the nightmares would be waiting and doubtless they would be worse than ever after the events of the evening. Alice’s soft footsteps sounded as she set down the candleholder and approached the bed.

"He’s sleeping, I think. I’m afraid you will get no answers at all toni—" She stopped abruptly.

Barling stiffened, skin prickling with disquiet.

_Something’s wrong._

This was confirmed the moment Alice began to scream, backing away from the bed. Barling ran into the room and she spun towards him, eyes wide with terror, hands held up, shining black with blood. She shook.

Barling moved past her to the bed. Lord William de Montfort lay with the covers thrown back and a bloody wound visible in his throat. His eyes were open slits, the candlelight glinting in their depths. _He is dead_ , Barling thought, and then there a gurgling sound, and a bubble of blood popped at his throat. The eyes flickered. Barling felt for breath at the mouth, found the skin still warm.

"He’s still alive," he said. "If we act quickly we might be able to save him." Or at the very least fetch a priest in time to give this man the last rites and his soul absolution. And then something else occurred to him, which turned his skin cold.

This was a fresh wound. Which meant that whoever was responsible had to still be in the house. He began to turn, about to call for Alice.

There was a footfall behind him. He heard it and registered at the same moment that her sobs had stopped, but he didn’t have time to consider what that might mean before a heavy object swung down and crunched into the back of his skull.

His head exploded in a starburst of pain, and he collapsed on the bed, still conscious but dazed. Black stars spiralled before his eyes. Beneath him he felt the body of the dying man beneath the covers and his mind went to Stanton, half-asleep and dozing. Stanton placed his hand on the nape of Barling’s neck, his touch tender and gentle. The fingers burrowed into Barling’s neatly kept tonsure, but no, something was wrong; those fingers tightened in his hair and jerked his head back, all pretence of gentleness gone. He tried to move and something cut tightly into his wrists. He’d been bound.

Groggily, he came to, blinking like an owl.

Alice brought her face close to his, her eyes cold and calculating as she held a knife to his throat. "Try to scream. The men are all chasing after a phantom, and only the female servants are left. Calling for help will achieve nothing, but the blood of yet another woman on your hands."

" _You_ ," he said weakly. "You murdered those women." Which meant that he had sent an innocent man to the gallows.

She shook her head. "I killed Catherine. You’re right about that. But not Mary. I wish I had."

"Then who did?"

"You’re a clever man, Master Barling. You always were, weren’t you, squirming your fingers into matters that had nothing to do with you. Can’t you guess?"

He stared at her, putting the pieces together. "Thomas. It _was_ Thomas. I was right–"

"Partly right."

"Thomas killed Mary, but you killed Catherine. Why?"

"Someone had to set things right."

Barling was thinking, remembering the way the bodies had been described. Mary’s body had been arranged with care and precision and left in the stables: someone had cared. But not Catherine. She’d been dumped and left for the scavengers on the heath. The bodies were so different because there had been two separate murderers. And then she gripped his hair, hauled him backwards, and threw him roughly to the floor.

He landed hard on his elbow, and a jarring pain shot up his forearm. He breathed hard, fighting through it. There was a pulsing pain in his head, and it felt as though his skull had been split open. He could feel wet stickiness on the back of his neck. Breathless, fighting to get his words out, he said: "John de Montfort told us that Thomas hated you."

"John’s too stupid to see beyond the nose on his face. Thomas showed the world what we wanted it to see. The truth is, we loved each other. But if anyone knew that, we’d have been expected to marry."

He closed his eyes. The pain in his skull pulsed, dizzying, so fierce he could hardly breathe. "I don’t understand. If you cared for each other why did you not just marry?"

"I told you. Thomas had his sights set on a higher goal. If I married him..." She leaned closer, tracing the knife along the length of Barling’s jaw. His dry throat ached with the urge to swallow, but he was afraid of moving a fraction of an inch; the point of the knife already pricked at his skin. "…Well, if I married him, then how could I then go on to marry John?"

He stared at her, at a loss.

"This house has been my home for almost my entire life." She leaned closer still and hissed, "It ought to have been mine by rights." She gestured with a sweep of the knife to Lord de Montfort. "He would have been happy for me to marry his bastard, but not John, no, never John. He’d marry some fine lady and I would be reduced to the level of a servant in what ought to be _my own home._ " The candlelight caught in her eyes, and for a moment she seemed like a creature illuminated from within by fire. Young and savage. "But it was a game, you realise? A game. We’d never have gone through with it. Thomas loved his father and his brother, but that sneaking little witch–"

"Mary Hirst."

She nodded. "We’d both been robbed of our birthright. This was my home, and Thomas was the eldest, for all that he was base-born. All we ever wanted was what was ours. And they were so alike, Thomas and John, even if they did have different mothers. If Thomas were disfigured somehow, burned in a fire, perhaps, no one would have known any different."

"You meant to kill his father and brother. Kill them and have Thomas take his brother’s place?" He said it numbly, stunned by how mad it sounded. It was utter lunacy.

Her eyes flared with sudden rage. "I told you, it was only a _game_. A jest. Just a stupid story we used to tell each other. We’d never actually have gone through with it."

"But Mary Hirst overheard."

"She always was a spying little thing. She promised not to tell, but she’d never keep that promise, I could tell. She was already bursting with glee. And if it got back to Thomas’s father, it would have ruined us both. Thomas only meant to frighten her."

So Thomas murdered her, seduced the dairy maid into lying about the vagrant–"

"The vagrant was here. Just not on that day.

He shook his head, dazed. "And Catherine? And my Lord de Montfort… Was his illness down to you too?"

"No..." She glanced towards the bed. "And yes. He was taken ill, but not by my hand. Not at first. But afterwards…" She settled on her haunches, a bitter smile twisting at one corner of her lips. "They tell me I’m an excellent nurse. I know all the remedies, any number of poultices and ointments that can save lives. And take them, if necessary. I’m an excellent cook too."

He stared at her, stricken, remembered the mouth-watering smell of the broth, how his mouth had started to water. "You have been poisoning him?" he whispered, aghast.

She smiled, although her eyes remained flinty. "It all seems a little pointless now. I should have suffocated him in the beginning and had done, but I rather confess I enjoyed it, poisoning that bastard right in front of everyone. Even you, Master Barling, stood there and watched me spoon it carefully into his mouth, making sure he didn’t miss a drop."

"Why?"

"Because he sat and watched Thomas led away to the scaffold and didn’t lift a finger. He let it happen. And _you_ –" Her expression contorted with fury and grief. "If you had only left things alone, Thomas would be alive, but no, you had to go poking and prodding into matters that were none of your business."

"Is that why you killed Catherine?" he said. "To have me brought here? Alice, this is madness. You can’t possibly think you’ll get away with it."

"I’m dead already." She stuffed a cloth into his mouth, pricking the knife at his throat when he tried to keep his jaw clenched. The fabric soaked up his saliva, threatened to choke him. "I died on the gallows when they hanged Thomas." She threw the knife aside, and took the pillow from the bed, jerking it out from underneath de Montfort’s head. "You killed me." She paused at the head of the bed, her head tilted as she considered the body. "He was right, you know. You do have Catherine’s blood on your hands. She’d still be alive if it wasn’t for you."

And then she came back towards him and brought the pillow down. He twisted away, fighting it, but she pressed her knee against his chest, pinning him in place, and the pillow descended over his face. He wrenched his head to the side, sucking air desperately through his nostrils. Thanks to the gag it already felt like he could not breathe. She gripped his hair and forced his head back around. He felt agony in his scalp as his hair tore out at the roots, and then she slammed his head down against the floor, and the pain of the impact against the tender spot at the back of his skull was agonising. His every muscle went limp and boneless, his sob of pain swallowed up by the gag, and then the pillow was descending again, and she was holding his head fixed in place so he could not escape it.

He bucked and wrenched, his world shrinking to the pain in his head and his inability to breath, but she was too strong, and he couldn’t breathe; he couldn’t _breathe_. And the world was bleeding at the edges, breaking apart like ice in a thaw, and he was a young man again, and all the world was hazy and pleasant with the rosy glow of just enough drink, and he was singing, one of the finest pleasures in the world, bar one; he was singing with a craftman’s pride in his work, aware that he had captured the interest of the crowd. Their chatter had dimmed and quieted, and they were all watching him. He held them cupped in the palm of his hand, but even though he stared out across their heads as he sang, his attention was reserved for only one person there, and every inch of his skin was alive and prickling with excitement. His chest expanded with pride and love as he held a long soaring note, and he could not stop himself from glancing around, over to where Richard was watching.

 _Stanton_. Lounging at a table and watching in enthralment, the firelight catching in his golden hair. His face was bright and filled with a fierce joy that Barling had never seen in Richard’s face, not once in all the time that Barling knew him. Their eyes met, and the song faltered. Barling felt a chill creeping over his skin, a dark shadow spreading out across his vision; the world was breaking apart and he knew he was dying.

A door slammed. Distant yelling. Without warning the pillow crushing the life out of him was ripped away.

He sucked air frantically through his nose, his throat working spasmodically. The gag at the back of his throat choked him, threatening to make him sick. And then Stanton was falling to his knees beside him and gathering him up.

"Barling? Oh God, Barling." Stanton tugged the gag from his mouth, and he coughed, sucking in air gratefully through his ragged throat. Stanton pulled him close and held him.

"Alice," Barling managed. "It was her. She–"

"I know. John de Montfort has her. She fought him like a wildcat. He’s locking her in her room." Stanton shifted position, and produced something. A rusting nail. Barling stared at it, and in his confused state he thought it the nail that the anchorite from his childhood had used to dig his wounds deeper. But how could Stanton have got hold of that? "When we got back from that wild goose chase she sent us on, I found this in the wall near where we thought she’d been strangled. She must have wrapped something like cat-gut around it, used it to make it look like someone had tried to strangle her. She’s mad."

"Lord de Montfort–" Barling started up, and a wave of dizziness swept through him. Stanton gently pushed him down.

"It’s too late for him," he said and crossed himself. He offered Barling a weak smile. "Really, Barling. I leave you alone for scarcely an hour and yet again someone tries to kill you."

"I did not mean to make a habit of it." He began to sit up more carefully, and raised a hand gingerly to the back of his head. His fingers came away sticky. Stanton watched him in concern, the worry on his face sitting ill on his youthful features. "You saved my life, Stanton. Again."

"I wish I didn’t _have_ to make a habit of it."

They shared a smile, although Barling’s was stiff and unconvincing and Stanton’s smile quickly faded.

"Let’s get you back to your room." He helped Barling up.

Although the back of his head was still painful, the dizziness had gone, and he found he could walk unaided. Still Stanton followed behind him, clucking like a mother hen all the way to his room.

Once there. Barling caught hold of Stanton’s hand and clung on for a moment, light-headed in the wake of coming so close to death. Stanton’s fingers felt warm, and they moved in his. Their fingers entwined and Barling thought he’d never felt anything so right in all his life.

Stanton murmured his name and Barling shivered, closing his eyes to shut out Stanton’s face, which seemed glorious, as bright and terrible as the sun, and like the sun he couldn’t help thinking it might burn out his vision. "You should go," Barling said. "No doubt John de Montfort will need someone to ride out to fetch aid, and since you are almost certainly the fastest rider–"

"Damn John de Montfort. I’m not leaving you if I can’t trust you not to get yourself killed."

He exhaled, opened his eyes, found Stanton too close. Their eyes met, and the certain knowledge that this was a sin ran through his mind, along with his concern for the fate of his immortal soul, and more importantly Stanton’s. And then he remembered the anchorite from his boyhood, a walking skeleton in tattered rags. His holiness hadn’t stopped the black poison that crept in through his wounds from killing him. In fact, it had been his very holiness that led him to mortify his own flesh past the point of self-destruction: that seemed a kind of poison in itself.

He opened his eyes and met Stanton’s, which were clouded with a mixture of emotions. His golden hair was damp with rainwater, plastered to his forehead in curls. Barling opened his mouth to tell Stanton to go, to find John de Montfort and offer his aid, except his mind must have still been confused, because instead of doing that he leant forward and kissed Stanton. Not the closed-mouthed kiss of earlier, but something with considerably more heat and urgency. Then he pulled away, certain Stanton would recoil in disgust and claim it was a joke after all.

Instead Stanton kissed him back, harder and fiercer, the tip of his tongue pressing with some urgency into Barling’s mouth, coiling against his own tongue. Barling was pressed back against the desk, Stanton’s hands rising up to cup his cheeks, his leg sliding between Barling’s.

And there could be no doubt that Stanton wanted this: his manhood was a constant urgent pressure against Barling’s thigh, as he deliberately sought out Barling’s cock and rubbed his hip against it, until the two of them were rutting against each other like animals.

Barling gasped, a tightening knot of pleasure in his groin rising to a peak with the constant pressure and Stanton’s proximity. Unable to prevent the responding movement in his own hips, it was as if he no longer had control over his body. It had been too long since the last shameful dream of heat and flesh, when he’d woke to find his sheets sticky, as if he were a boy again.

Stanton’s mouth found his as he spent, overwhelmed by pleasure, his body shaking, his cock pulsing as he spilled his seed into his black gown and groaned out his pleasure into Stanton’s mouth.

Stanton went still against him, letting him recover. Barling felt the substance in his woollen robe rapidly cooling against his skin, and he broke the kiss, looking away in embarrassment until Stanton set his hand against his cheek and drew him back into another kiss. This kiss was a little softer and not so hungry, and Barling had the distinct impression that he was being gently seduced. Stanton sucked on Barling’s lower lip, drawing it between his.

Carefully, Barling reached down and found the outline of Stanton’s cock through his braies. He squeezed it, drawing a moan from the younger man. Stanton was breathing hard, very nearly panting, his lips bruised and shining with saliva, his hair even more desperately in need of a comb than ever, and for once Barling didn’t care about Stanton’s dishevelled state. With the same slow caution, Barling reached for the fastenings of Stanton’s braies.

" _Wait_..." Stanton caught his wrist.

_No. Oh sweet God, no._

It felt like a cold fist closing around his heart. That he should be brought to this point, frotting himself to his peak like an animal against another man’s thigh, only to then be rejected. "You don’t want to..."

"God’s eyes, it’s not that. I _do_. More than anything, I do, believe me, but I can’t." Stanton curled his fist and thumped it lightly against the desk. He eased away and the sharp smell of Barling’s seed rose up between then. "You were right. I am the fastest rider, and no doubt John de Montfort will be expecting me to fetch aid. He’s probably already wondering where I am, and if he sends someone to come looking for me… I have to go." Stanton combed his hair with his fingers and then shook it like a dog, which might have gone some way to explain why his hair was usually in such disarray. He cast Barling a helpless look as he adjusted his erection.

"Of course you must." He tried to make his voice stern, but a quiver crept in despite his best efforts. His semen was cooling rapidly, a chill sticky kiss on his tender skin.

When Stanton had left, Barling undressed and wiped his undergarments off as best he could. Then he turned to the task of cleaning himself up.

At last the rain had stopped.

He sat at his desk. At least in writing down his findings, he could put aside his confusion and arousal and tumultuous thoughts, silencing the mess of guilt and desire and fear and resentment that clamoured in his mind as he laid down the facts, slowly, methodically, line by line. A simple matter, in a world where matters were rarely ever simple.

Once he was done, the thin dawn light was seeping through the shutters, grey and watery. Under normal circumstances, he would be rising and washing himself, preparing himself for the rigours of the day, but now it felt as though his limbs had been filled with lead and his eyelids keep threatening to close. When he found himself jerking awake at the desk, he retired to bed, crawling between the covers. Just for a moment, he promised himself, because it was almost daylight, and he ought to be up and about by now, not drowsing like a lazy slug-a-bed. Just for a moment, and then he’d wake and dress, and then his eyes slid closed and he was asleep.

His sleep was uneasy, mostly untroubled by the worst of the dreams, but they were still there, lurking like monsters from an older darker age at the edge of a traveller’s campfire. Likely they always would be.

Once he was woken by a knock on the door, and he snapped awake, thinking it Stanton, and his heart was pounding hard and he couldn’t tell if it was from excitement or fear. It was only John de Montfort, who was ashen-faced and looked as though he had been drinking heavily, come to check if he had need of a physician. Barling said he did not and John de Montfort nodded and left him to rest.

The next time he woke it wasn’t dreams or their stricken-faced host, but Stanton. He knocked against the door and murmured Barling’s name softly.

"I am awake, Stanton."

"Did I wake you?"

Barling shook his head. "I ought to rise," he said, wearily. "It must be well past Terce."

"Sleep if you need it. You almost died. I’m afraid I may have overstepped my bounds. I ordered John de Montfort that you weren’t to be disturbed if the king himself came hammering on the door. He’s so upset I think he might even listen." Stanton hesitated, half-turned towards the door. "I’ll let you rest..."

There was a hollow sensation in his chest. It seemed to swell up and spread through him, rising into his throat, making it hard to get his words out. "I would… prefer that you stay." But once the words had been spoken the tight Gordian knot around his heart released. It made his next words easier. Of course, that didn’t mean much, since his next words were a slightly waspish: "Unless you would prefer to break your fast," which was a familiar and easy path to tread with Stanton, who laughed, already tugging at his clothes.

"That can wait," he said. He stripped to his linen underclothes, and only then did he hesitate, smile fading. Barling read Stanton’s uncertainty as regret and his throat tightened. The Gordian knot had been released, and he did not see how he could ever tie it back up again, or how he could ever live through such a rejection twice in one lifetime. And it wasn’t just that fear which beset him, but his concern that he might have risked losing whatever it was that lay between him and Stanton, that understanding beyond lust that allowed them to work so well together, despite the considerable differences in their natures.

Stanton sat on the side of the bed and knotted his hands together, glancing at Barling with an embarrassed smile. "The thing is, I’ve... not been with… um, a _man_ before. So whatever it is you’re expecting…"

"I’m not expecting anything. Stanton." Then, quieter, softer, and with even less certainty, as if it was a gift he wasn’t certain the other man would want, he added, " _Hugo_."

Stanton smiled. It was a warm liquid smile and it spread slowly across his face, lazy and wicked and joyous and affectionate all at once, and it was purely and simply for Barling alone. No one had ever smiled at Barling like that before. Not once in all his life. "Aelred," he said, with the same wicked joy as his smile. Barling shivered.

Stanton turned, crawling across the bed on his knees, moving to straddle Barling. At first the blankets were between them, and then they were not.

If Stanton was expecting Barling to be a master of the art, he was to be disappointed. There was a certain amount of fumbling before they each found their rhythm. And the truth was, that no matter how the world seemed to shrink to this room, this bed, their time together was limited. The day was drawing on, and with every minute that passed, the risk grew greater that someone would come looking for them, and still Barling did not think he could stop this if he wanted to.

Stanton’s uncertain caresses quickly grew more confident; he might never have been with a man before, but he picked up the knack of it quickly enough, and seemed to marvel at every caress, and at every difference between their bodies, Stanton’s taut and sparsely muscled, Barling’s slender and pale and soft.

Barling quickly came to realise that in this matter Stanton was nothing like Richard, who had always been more intent on taking his pleasure and being pleasured than on giving it. Stanton seemed as fascinated by Barling’s body and the best means of drawing pleasure from it as Barling was by his.

The light seeping through the shutters was enough to see by, now, enough that Barling could look down and see Stanton’s mouth closing over his erection, testing out different movements of his lips and tongue, no doubt the sensations he preferred himself. Barling gasped, back arching, clawing at the bed clothes, and managed to gasp out, "Stop. _Stop_ ," before he spilled his seed in Stanton’s mouth.

Stanton pulled away, and Barling panted, feeling as if he was being held suspended between one moment and the next. Stanton’s own erection arched up from coarse curls a few shades darker than the hair on his head. Barling reached out and grasped it, watching the way Stanton dropped his head back, eyes half-closing as he murmured Barling’s name – not ‘Barling’, but ‘ _Aelred_ ’ – as Barling slid his hand along its length until Stanton’s hips began to move in involuntary little jerks, his hand tightening on Barling’s thigh.

Then he was dropping onto the bed beside Barling. He kissed him and reached for his cock, no longer uncertain, no longer fumbling. In this, as in almost everything else, Stanton proved a quick study, and the clear pleasure he took in this act, untainted by guilt or shame, seemed so wonderful Barling envied him.

It was infectious, that joy, and it was very nearly impossible, with Stanton’s hand on his shaft and Stanton’s tongue in his mouth, to recall his doubt. It receded, as did the lurking threat of dreams and his guilt over Fairmore Abbey, shrinking back like noonday shadows. They’d be back, of course; he knew that in his heart. He couldn’t shake something so innate to his nature so easily, but at least in this moment, as the pleasure gathered to a tight aching ecstasy, as Stanton groaned and arched his hips up towards Barling’s grip, the movements of his own hand growing frantic and uncontrolled, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, except this moment and this man with his hair like spun gold and his charming infectious smile.

Afterwards, they lay gasping and sated, and Barling spared a smile for how Stanton had already begun to spread himself across the bed with little care for where Barling was lying. Wherever a part of Barling’s anatomy got in the way, Stanton simply twined himself around it like a bramble. Claiming the space as his territory, as if he had every right to it. And Barling didn’t care. Not in the slightest.

It had been so long since anyone had sought his touch like this. In fact, he wasn’t certain that anyone _had_ ever touched him like this, out of pure affection rather than as a means to an end. Richard’s rough caresses had always been a prelude to an embrace, and afterwards, he’d always been sure to put space between them. He’d certainly never wriggled closer as Stanton was doing now, running his hand over Barling’s chest to tug gently at the sparse hair, the sensation sending gooseflesh rippling over Barling’s skin. He kissed Barling’s shoulder, then went still, seeming to consider something for a long time before he spoke. Barling was already tensing, fearful of what the question might be, but it wasn’t what he was expecting. Not even close.

"Will you sing for me?" Stanton asked.

Barling’s mind went at once to the vision he’d seen while the life was being crushed out of him. It had faded, taking on the hazy quality of a dream. Details in dreams could never be trusted; they rearranged themselves like shifting shoals. Perhaps it hadn’t been Stanton he saw in that vision; perhaps he only wished that were so. All he could think of was Richard’s eyes, and a flame licking around the corner of a sheet of parchment, and he couldn’t do it. Not that. Not yet. Some wounds were still too tender to the touch.

He opened his mouth to speak. Closed it. Licked his lips. Stanton rose up beside him, sensing something was wrong, and it was the concern on Stanton’s face that forced out the words. "I cannot."

"I’m sure your voice will still be more than passable," Stanton began, smiling, but he trailed off when he saw Barling’s expression. Something flickered in his eyes, not the anger or irritation that Barling feared, but a brief vulnerable flash of hurt. His smile slipped, but then returned, more gentle. "Perhaps another time."

"Yes," Barling said, relieved and thankful. "Perhaps another time." He drew in a breath and pulled away, sitting up. Stanton’s hand trailed down his spine. "We need to bestir ourselves. There’s a great deal of work to be done." He glanced at Stanton with mock-sternness. "And I’m certain _you_ are hungry and can think of nothing else but breaking your fast."

"As a matter of fact," Stanton admitted, without even the barest trace of shamefacedness, "I made my way to your chamber by way of the kitchen, so I have _already_ broken my fast." He grinned as Barling rolled his eyes up to heaven, and sat up, bringing his mouth to Barling’s ear. "I thought I might need to keep up my strength."

Barling’s expression turned scandalised.


End file.
